Long-term friends Mumford & Sons and Laura Marling tell us how their recent travels have given birth to some surprising new projects.

Mumford & Sons promise to shock iTunes festival audience

In recent years, a curious scene seems to have developed in the Thamesside suburbs of west and south-west London.

Dozens of well brought-up young men and women based in this corner of the capital – Mystery Jets, Jeremy Warmsley, Noah And The Whale, Jesse Quin And The Mets, Jamie T, Peggy Sue and Jay Jay Pistolet – have developed a curious brand of acoustic music that seems to reject the past 40 years of pop.

Singing in their own accents and brandishing ukuleles, banjos, double basses and even washboards, they hark back to much earlier genres – skiffle, blues, bluegrass, country, folk, rockabilly – even though most of these musicians are barely out of their twenties.

As they share bills and guest in each others’ bands, they display a folksiness and a community spirit that has earned comparisons with California’s Laurel Canyon scene of the late 1960s and early 1970s.

Mumford & Sons appear to be the Crosby, Stills & Nashstyle supergroup of the scene.

All four members started out as sidemen with other west London luminaries: frontman Marcus Mumford played drums for Laura Marling (pictured below); bassist Marshall ‘Country’ Winston worked with members of Noah And The Whale; while multi-instrumentalists Ben Lovett and Ted Dwane served as itinerant accompanists for fellow scenesters such as Alessi’s Ark and Alan Pownall.

They look and sound like an old-fashioned rabble of minstrels, circa 1930, singing a rugged, country-flavoured stew on mandolins, banjos, accordions and hand drums. But Mumford, Lovett and Winston actually started out in a jazz band at King’s College School in Wimbledon.

‘We covered Miles Davis and John Coltrane tunes, played old jazz standards, all the usual stuff,’ says Lovett.

‘Then Marcus disappeared to university for a bit and me and Winston found ourselves playing in all sorts of indie bands.’

They reconvened in 2007, when Mumford dropped out of an English degree at Edinburgh University and returned to London.

‘One day we decided that, instead of just backing other people, we should give it a go ourselves,’ Mumford says.

‘We booked a rehearsal studio for six hours and it all clicked immediately. We ended up writing four or five songs really quickly, playing whatever random instruments we had to hand. Most of my lyrics were ripped off Shakespeare.’

One of these songs was Little Lion Man, which has since gone top five around the world, from Belgium to Australia. Mumford’s former employer, Laura Marling, shows every sign of being the Joni Mitchell of the scene.

Marling has only just turned 20 but her astonishingly mature songcraft – which explores rather darker territory than her contemporaries – has attracted almost universal praise from critics.

Marling and Mumford are currently an item, although neither seem comfortable discussing it. But even beyond the romantic relationship, Marling and Mumford & Sons are closely linked.

The band have often supported Marling, including an entire North American tour, and Marling has frequently guested with them, singing Dolly Parton songs. ‘Laura’s got an amazing skill with words and imagery,’ says Lovett.

‘I’ve probably seen her play more than a hundred times and I’ve never seen a gig where she’s not completely engaging. She’s someone whose work will endure for years and years.’

The iTunes Festival sees both acts returning from (separate) US tours.

A few months earlier, both were part of a joint tour of India, a trip organised by the British Council. ‘It was an amazing experience,’ says Mumford.

‘There’s a generic perception of Indian music you get from Bollywood caricatures,’ says Lovett, ‘but we got into a lot of Indian folk music, getting into the modal scales and drones and rhythms.

‘That’s why we’re both so excited about the iTunes festival – it’s the first chance we’ll have to exhibit the work we did in India. We worked with folk musicians from Rajasthan, while Laura worked with a band called Papon Angaraag. Both will join us at the Roundhouse. I think the two projects will surprise a few people!’